Mingle 2.0

So work on our project, named Mingle 2.0, is coming along fairly well. Victor will be away until Monday, which leaves me as the only programmer for some time, which worries me a bit. I have a lot to do in other courses as well, so being burdened with coding for the Sun SPOTs all alone isn't ideal.
I have been able to get the Sun SPOTs running however, with help from Christian Bogdan. It now can run the demos, like the bounce demo in the picture.

This bodes well for the future work on Mingle 2.0, as getting the environment up and running was the biggest concern and caused us the most trouble in the previous week. 

So on to the idea of Mingle 2.0. We believe that it can be hard to mingle and talk to new people at a party. This is especially true if it also is a business occasion, such as a conference or company social event. Therefore, we want to make interactive glasses, in our prototype they are beer glasses, that will help break the ice so to speak. Each user will register their glass and some information about them will be linked to our database. Our hope would be to connect with social media such as LinkedIn or Facebook, but this is just the conceptual base.

The glass would light up, thanks to a RGB LED in the bottom of the glass, on the attached coaster. The LED is connected to a Sun SPOT that is connected to our base station with Internet access to our database. Based on your relation to the closest other glass, the glass will change colour in some way. The exact interaction hasn't been determined yet. For instance, we could have a "flirt" mode where you have to find the other person with the same colour as your glass.

All in all, it has been a fun week, with me taking apart and analysing the insides of the Sun SPOTs, quietly and loudly swearing over the environment (especially ANT!), and the successfully getting it to work. I will probably take a Sun SPOT kit home to continue development over the weekend, but no promises. 

Rapid prototyping day 2

So I forgot to post my follow-up video of the prototype we made. So here it is ^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piHoR9wdQpQ&feature=youtu.be

Rapid prototyping day 1

So the first day of the rapid prototyping has completed.
For our prototype we are making a sort of interactive game based on colours. We have lots of different ideas for this game, and it can be expanded far. The main problem is that with the very limited time at our disposal, most of our planned features and functions will be stripped away. We will therefore be focusing on a Wizard-of-Oz style setup where we will simulate the user interaction experience. This is split into two separate parts.

The first part is the design of the interactive device (which we have yet to name). It consists of a webcam that will take the colour values of whatever surface/fabric that is "filmed". This webcam is in a rubber sphere to facilitate handling and to look appealing. This particular webcam came with its own RGB LED diodes, which is fortunate, as we plan to show the colour that needs to be found by the user. For our prototype we don't have the time to gain access to the webcam's board. It will look something like this.

As can be seen, when the ball is touched near the camera, the colour of the LEDs are changed.

The second part will be the logic part. It will be done with the help of an Android smartphone. We have not worked so much on it yet, it will be detailed in tomorrow's blog.

Thoughts on the first week of Physical Interaction DH2400

So the first week is now done, and I must say that it has accomplished a few things. Before, I didn't have any interest in hardware, but now I see lots of potential and have lots of ideas that are swimming around. I had no knowledge of working with hardware, except for a single course during my first year at Computer Science. Now I am interested with what this course can teach me.
Going into this course with game development in mind, I played around with the different phidgets, and saw lots of potential.

I was having some trouble, however. Trying to use the slider to control the motor was hard, and I didn't manage to make it work before we ended.

I did get lots of ideas for a project however. Something that would interest me is to convert the game I made for DT2140 Multimodal Interaction, Blox360.

It uses fiducials through ReacTIVision and a webcam to control the paddles. Instead, it could be controlled with sonar sensors, and having a projector that shows the screen on the floor.

Looking around the internet, trying to get ideas for the prototype and the project, I also stumbled on this very interesting Kickstarter, Gameduino.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWn-6FB4cNQ
I'll leave it there for now ^^